After more than 20 years of affiliation with the Mershon Center for International Security Studies, including 10 years as director, Richard Herrmann stepped down in July 2011 to become chair of the Department of Political Science at The Ohio State University.

Taking his place as director of the Mershon Center is another longtime affiliate, J. Craig Jenkins, professor of sociology, political science, and environmental science at Ohio State.

Jenkins’s research focuses on four areas:

Rentier states and political conflict in the Middle East

Patterns of political contention

Development and impact of the U.S. environmental movement

Political economy of high technology development

He is the author of more than 80 referred articles and book chapters, as well as author or editor of several books including The Politics of Insurgency: The Farm Worker’s Movement of the 1960s (1986); The Politics of Social Protest: Comparative Perspectives on States and Social Movements, with Bert Klandermans (1995); Identity Conflicts: Can Violence be Regulated? with Esther Gottlieb (2007); and Handbook of Politics: State and Society in Global Perspective, with Kevin T. Leicht (2010).

Jenkins has received numerous awards, including being elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Joan Huber Faculty Fellow, and Fulbright Fellow to Norway. He chaired the Department of Sociology at Ohio State from 2006 to 2010 and was a visiting professor at the Peace Research Institute of Oslo, Norway, in 2010-11.